#1042: DENIS, Claire: Beau Travail (1999)

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DENIS, Claire (France)
Beau Travail [1999]
Spine #1042
Blu-ray


With her ravishingly sensual take on Herman Melville's Billy Budd, Sailor, Claire Denis firmly established herself as one of the great visual tone poets of our time. Amid the azure waters and sunbaked desert landscapes of Djibouti, a French Foreign Legion sergeant (Denis Lavant) sows the seeds of his own ruin as his obsession with a striking young recruit (Grégoire Colin) plays out to the thunderous, operatic strains of Benjamin Britten. Denis and cinematographer Agnès Godard fold military and masculine codes of honor, colonialism's legacy, destructive jealousy, and repressed desire into shimmering, hypnotic images that ultimately explode in one of the most startling and unforgettable endings in all of modern cinema.

93 minutes
Color
Stereo
in French
1:66:1 aspect ratio
Criterion Release 2020
Director/Writers


Story by Herman Melville.
Screenplay by Claire Denis and Jean-Pol Fargeau.
Denis was 53 when she directed Beau Travail.

Other Denis films in the Collection:

#560: White Material (2009)
#976: Let The Sunshine In (2017)

The Film

A

Film Rating (0-60):

60

The Extras

The Booklet

Eight-page foldout poster featuring an essay by critic Girish Shambu.

Commentary

Selected-scene commentary with DP Agnès Godard.

Conversation

Between Denis and filmmaker Barry Jenkins.

Interviews

With actors Lavant and Colin.

Video essay

By film scholar Judith Mayne.

Extras Rating (0-40):

39

60 + 39 =

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